SARATOGA COUNTY -- A long, narrow band of lake-effect snow was responsible for the hazardous conditions that triggered Saturday's massive Northway pileup that left a quarter-mile of the interstate riddled with disabled vehicles and surprised drivers.

"It was hardly snowing when I got on at Exit 17," said Bonnie Weiler, who got stuck in the middle of the pileup on her way home from Glens Falls. She and her vehicle made it out unharmed.

"I could see, but for some reason that burst of snow, which was really heavy, caused freezing conditions on the road. I saw tractor-trailers ahead of me start to go sideways and I started to step on my brakes and I had no traction whatsoever. It was like roller derby out there," Weiler said.

It's a position no driver wants to be in, but unfortunately snow squalls and heavy lake-effect snow can alter driving conditions at a moment's notice.

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Weiler said she was going about 50 mph -- 15 mph under the speed limit -- because of changing visibility, but there was still no time to react, as the road was suddenly covered in black ice. She managed to steer around the other cars and come to a stop in a pocket between two collisions, one in front of her and one behind her, she said. Her car was so close to another that she couldn't open the driver's side door.

"The scary part was hearing the crashing behind me," Weiler said.

She was stuck on the Northway for 2-1/2 hours but said it was a small price to pay for walking away unscathed from a pileup.

"I'm just blessed," Weiler said, reflecting on the accident.

Tom Rinaldi, chairman of the Stillwater Emergency Planning Committee, said lake-effect snow bands in this region originate over Lake Ontario, where they pick up moisture.

If the bands are powerful enough, they flow through the Mohawk Valley and will dump snow in the Saratoga region. They can almost instantly create whiteout conditions with zero visibility and coat roads with an inch or two of snow.

"It's a phenomena that happens around the Great Lakes because they're so expansive they create their own weather," Rinaldi said.

The bands of snow are usually fewer than 10 miles wide and can even be as small as only one mile wide, but they are long and condensed.

Rinaldi remembers witnessing lake-effect snow in Buffalo that resulted in 71 inches accumulating over the course of 12 hours.

"And then I got to Batavia (less than an hour's drive away) and there was two inches of snow on the ground," Rinaldi recalled with a laugh.

Brian Montgomery, the lead forecaster at the National Weather Service in Albany, said Saturday's snowfall came from a very small band. But, because it crossed over the interstate, its impact was hard-hitting.

"It just goes to show, you don't need a big snowstorm to have an impact like that," he said.

Montgomery said meteorologists in Albany will gather data relevant to Saturday's pileup and evaluate the situation.

"It's important to have good winter driving skills in the Northeast -- slow down, allow for room between vehicles and watch for sudden changes in visibility," he said.

The Northway pileup sent about 30 people to the hospital, all for relatively minor injuries. Weiler said police and emergency responders did a wonderful job in assisting people at the accident scene.

"It was snowing and very slippery, and the road was blocked by the crash. Fire and rescue carried a lot of their equipment in by hand," she said.